UN, EU, Russia Condemn Israeli Settlements
"All members of the U.N. Security Council, with the lone exception of the United States, have publicly condemned Israel's recent settlement expansion activities and called for them to end. In a rare move, 14 of the council's 15 members read public statements of their views instead of seeking formal action by the council, since that likely would have been opposed by the United States."

"Nine years after U.S.-led forces toppled the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, even specialists in frontier markets are backing off from Iraq. Daily blackouts, congested ports and other infrastructure woes compound investor concerns about violence and corruption, and a broad recovery continues to elude this energy-rich nation of 33 million people."

Iran sidesteps sanctions to export its fuel oil
"Iran is becoming increasingly creative in dodging Western sanctions, managing to sell a rising volume of fuel oil to generate revenue equal to up to a third of its crude exports, which have been badly hit by restrictions."

This article is quite sobering. Nevertheless, it does not factor energy decline, climate change, or peak farmland (see below) into the equation, which makes the situation even more serious than described here. -- RF

"For the past six years the world has consumed more food than it has produced. As a result, global food reserves are at the lowest level since 1974, when the world had 4 billion people. Today we have 7 billion."

## Environment/health ##Human Hands Evolved for Punching
"Human hands evolved so that men could make fists and fight, and not just for manual dexterity, new research finds. The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, adds to a growing body of evidence that humans are among the most aggressive and violent animals on the planet."

## Japan ##Why Japan's new Prime Minister is a gold bug
"Japan's seventh prime minister in six years, Shinzo Abe has made it immediately clear that he wants a weaker yen and supports money printing to infinity. The markets have obliged by devaluing the yen by six per cent even before he assumed office, now perhaps they can really get going."

Of special interest here is that there is going to be a new post, an "economic revitalization minister." This is, of course, the way civilizations fall: They become increasingly complex, in turn requiring ever greater energy throughput to keep it all going. Energy-savvy people can already see the tragic end. The new prime minister intends to bring back the good old days through efforts at maintaining and expanding a system that has already reached its limits. -- RF